A Palestinian identified as Mohammad Khaled al-Osaibi, 26, from the town of Houra in the Naqab desert in the south of Israel, was shot and killed by Israeli police around midnight while he was near Chain Gate, one of the gates leading into Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, according to Israeli reports. Police claimed Osaibi, who graduated from a medical school in Romania and recently passed an exam to practice medicine in Israel, attempted to snatch a weapon from a border guard when he was shot and killed. However, witnesses said the police killed Osaibi in cold blood and from a very short distance after he intervened to help a Palestinian woman who was being assaulted by the police and forced to leave Al-Aqsa Mosque. Ayman Odeh, a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and former Knesset member Talab al-Saneh refuted the Israeli allegations about Osaibi attempting to snatch the gun of a policeman, a justification the police gave to kill him. Odeh said Osaibi went to pray at al-Aqsa Mosque in this holy month, and that just because he wanted to help a woman who was being assaulted by the police, he was ‘executed’ despite the fact he was unarmed ‘Everyone must understand that the occupation is the major continuous crime, and our issues will not end until it ends. All efforts must be directed to ending it,’ he said. Saneh also said Osaibi tried to intervene when he saw the police attacking an Arab woman, and so she was killed from a very short distance. ‘The police claim that he tried to snatch someone’s weapon is a lie and a fabrication,” he said, calling on the police to show the videotapes from the cameras in the area documenting the alleged attempt to snatch a weapon from a policeman. The police shut down all the gates to Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Old City following the incident and attacked shopkeepers and vendors in the area. The gates were later reopened. With the killing of Osaibi, the Israeli occupation forces have shot and killed 88 Palestinians since the start of the year, almost all of them from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Source: Palestine News & Information Agency